April 27, 2013

so, this weekend I'm at a 3-day SB crop in Tucson. (granted, right now I'm not scrapping- I'm on my way to breakfast!) Here's a bit of my workspace- not a great picture, but it was kind of late last night, and I was tired- I'll take better pics today.

It always takes me forEVER to get 'into' the creative mode when I attend something like this... there was a lot of time taken setting up my work area, a lot of socializing- since I met some of my online friends for the first time, which was very nice- a bit of scrappy shopping (of course, lol!), some scrapping, and some frustration. So, the sum total of my creativity so far is one scrapbook layout (which still isn't quite done):

'front' page

a layout with photos of our visit to Montezuma Castle National Monument. (it still needs the journaling and the 'finishing touches' added to it)

interior pages

I made a lot of math errors, glued things down in the wrong place multiple times, and wasted some paper, but finally got this to where I was satisfied with it at about 7 pm last night. So, this is my 9-hour layout! (not really, but this gives you an idea about how things went...)Today and tomorrow will be better! I better get going!! :D

April 25, 2013

just some random journal pages from the last couple weeks. Since I've been focusing on scrapbooking, till just recently I hadn't done anything in my journal at all-- I finally decided to give it some love! (my most recent journal is almost finished, now, so that'll give me the incentive to keep up with it.)

stamped text: I had a spelling issue, but as you can seeI didn't let it bother me- just stamped right over the error.

awkward: the entire page.

This page definitely 'took a turn' from where it started out, lol! I started with a stenciled background made ages ago with acrylic (blue, pink, and green) and watercolor (gray) paint. The antlers came first, from a clip-art elk. (I think it's an elk, anyway- could be a caribou. Don't tell my dad if I'm wrong, because after growing up in a house with a taxidermist for a father, and getting a zoology degree, I really should know that, lol!)

Anyway, the elk head was just hanging out on the page for a while... then recently I found the 'eye-image' necklace in a fashion magazine jewelry advertisement. It looked like it should just go there, if you know what I mean. (people who do collage will know what I mean- if you don't do collage, then just trust me- it was the perfect place for it.) I kept flipping through the fashion magazine and found the figure leaning on the railing, added it to the page, then added a skirt (which is actually a calla lily, taken from a different jewelry ad). Since I've already gone 'off the page' with it, I still may give the figure some legs-- not sure (I'm thinking bird legs). Then, the question of people staring popped into my head, so... the text.

odd? yup. but sometimes, 'odd' is what's in my head!

watercolored background (which reminds me of the Brady Bunch, for some reason) with a clip-art hand and some collaged details.

your outlook on life totally depends on your point of view!acrylic painted bubble-wrap stamping and a watercolor wash over the top with collaged images and patterned paper.

and now, it's back to 'scrapbook' mode for a couple days, because I'm going to be scrapbooking allweekendlong in Tucson starting (bright and early) tomorrow-- yay!!!!I'm taking my journaling stuff with me though, of course- along with practically all my other supplies, including my typewriter, my inks and mists, my new camera, my laptop, plenty of Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Mt. Dew, my Mad Men seasons 1-3 on DVD... lol!! (I definitely don't pack light, that's for sure!)

It's a 3-day retreat at a Tucson hotel and I'm really looking forward to it- if you hadn't already guessed :D I found out about it on an online scrapbooking forum- and I'll actually get to meet a few of those 'online' friends in real life! I'm hoping to have a lot of fun, do a little messing around with my camera and Photoshop Elements, sleep way too little, and maybe even get a few scrapbook layouts completed... I'll let you know how that turns out!

April 24, 2013

Watching:
-Chopped All-Stars: three rounds down so far!
-Deadliest Catch: the new season just started- yay!

Reading:
-The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King
Set in the early 20th century, the main character is Mary Russell, a 15-year old girl who meets a retired Sherlock Holmes in the English countryside… and of course there’s a mystery to solve! (I bought a book by this author at the thrift store, and found out the book I bought was #9 in a series—so I had to start at the beginning with this title.)

Listening to:
-Dawson’s Creek (TV show) soundtracks
-One Tree Hill (TV show) soundtrack
(over and over... when I get into something, I play it to death, lol! I have to concentrate at my desk at work, and I can’t do it if there’s lots of people talking)

Making:
-New art journal pages (I'm almost finished with my current journal- will post some pics soon)
-Lists of things to take with me to a 3-day scrapbooking crop I’m attending this weekend in Tucson

Feeling:
-Annoyed that 4-day work weeks always seem to be longer and more difficult than a regular 5-day work week is!
-Impatient to finally receive my Rx refills from the mail-order service (there was a delay in ordering due to a switch in our insurance plan)
-Impatient for my 4-day work week to be over with!

Looking forward to:
-Having a great time at the SB crop in Tucson this weekend! (but will miss everyone at home while I’m gone)
-Spending some quality time learning how to use my new camera.

Enjoying:
-The wonderful spring weather we’re having right now, before the summer temperatures hit with a vengeance. Currently it's still cool enough at night to open the windows, but has been getting into the 90s for highs temps.

April 23, 2013

this past weekend, I headed out to Phoenix to do some flea-market shopping. (Well, 'flea market' isn't exactly the best term for it- you'll see what I mean when you look at the photos- but it's the best I have...) Once a month, there is a 4-day antique market hosted by Sweet Salvagein the Melrose District of downtown Phoenix. It's a once-a-month 4-day antiques shopping event, basically one weekend a month, Thursday - Sunday, with every month having a different theme. That way, the merchandise always changes (and if you wnt something, it might not be there next month!)

This month's theme was Boho / Industrial Chic, I think... I bought a few small things (we don't need any large pieces of furniture, and this theme does not fit with our Southwestern decorating scheme), but took photos of some of the booths while I was there. The individual vendor spaces were accessorized so beautifully, it seemed like they could easily be vignettes straight out of an interior decorating magazine. Next month's theme is 'Sweet Retreat' so I'll definitely be going to see what the vendors can do with it!

love the red lockers!

tablescape with dog figurines and vintage silver

this booth was full of gorgeous vintage religious items

mother-of-pearl and vintage rhinestones-- beautiful!!

tablescape with vintage Santos figurine, angel wings, and coral, among other things. I really tried to figure out what I could do with those wooden wings, but ended up leaving them there.

painted hutchwith architectural items, figurines, and more

dogs and cigars- love it!! I really like this decorative bottle,but there was no compelling reason to bring it home with me.

this booth had a shabby-chic front porch feel to it.

this booth is definitely 'industrial chic' style, with therusty car grill on the wall, straight out of American Pickers!

Check out the Sweet Salvage blog and website for more photos of interesting and unusual merchandise. (since I didn't go till Saturday morning, I'm sure I missed out on seeing some of the best stuff-- although what was there on Saturday was still pretty amazing.)

April 15, 2013

whew!! This layout has been sitting on my workspace for a couple weeks now, and staring at me whenever I wanted to work on something else. (I started it back in this post, if you want a refresher.) So, tonight I finally decided it was time. I only needed to complete the journaling, but I was having a bit of a mental block about doing it for some reason. First I thought I'd hand-write it, but I decided I had too much to say (which is quite often the case, with me, lol!) so I went for the typewriter. Here it is:

sorry for the glare, but I didn't want to wait till tomorrow to take the photos of it, lol!

I typed the text on a piece of plain ivory cardstock, then cut the pieces apart with my trimmer. I had to get creative with my cutting to get everything I wanted to say in the space, and make it look neat, without creating too many places where there was 'trapped white space' to make it look strange. Journaling like this takes a bit of time (to get everything typed and spaced right), but I like how it turned out.

LEFT

RIGHT

close-up #1: a re-styled flower embellishment

close-up #2: second re-styled flower embellishment

It's not my favorite layout in the world, but it's finally done, and I like it. I still think I'm going to print more photos from that trip and make another layout, but this one is in the can (so to speak, lol!).

April 10, 2013

First, a detail shot of the cactus garden nursery layout so far. I'm not quite done with it yet; right now I'm at the 'fiddling around' and adding 'just one more thing' to it before I write the journaling stage of things, which can take a while, the way I work. I guess I'm just not a '30-minutes start to finish' type of scrapper, because I keep thinking of small details that would add something to the page. Instead, my layouts sort of evolve over a week or two as I work on them here and there when I have some time.

detail of the horizontal strip background

I started out with only the multi-colored striped paper decorating the background borders, but quickly decided the other sections looked a bit plain by comparison. So I added bluewashi tape (it's such handy stuff to have around!) and two border stickers to the other background sections. I think the layout design is finally 'done' now, so all I have left is the title (which will be letter stickers (and journaling (to be typed on my typewriter and added in as strips).

So, I'm almost there! Except for the fact that now, something about the photos I chose for this layout sort of 'bothers' me... I chose photos that represented the main highlights of the place, but now I think I'm going to make at least one more page so I can include some additional photos.

And now on to some other scrap-related stuff:

I bought an 18x24 piece of quilter's template plastic, for about $3, and spent some time last night making a 12x12 'sunburst' stencil.(And I still have enough material to make a couple more stencils!)

Here's the first test of my new stencil- I like it! There are some stencils available to buy with this design, but I don't think they cover the entire space of the 12x12 page, which is what I really wanted to be able to do.

Here's a totally separate layout that I made last night after I finished cutting the stencil. (I could have finished up the cactus nursery layout, but I just 'wasn't feeling it' for some reason, and I don't like to force my creativity. Things start to go wrong when I make myself work on a project without being really inspired.) Shimelle posted a new page sketch on her blog a couple days ago (go here to see it), and I used her sketch to scrap one of my 'orphan' photos:

a random (non-digital) photo of a peony bouquet, from the year 2002, by the info on the back. I have a stack of random single photos like this- not enoughto warrant a multi-photo or multi-page layout, but still nice enough photos that I want to include them in my album. This layout uses some challenge elements from the SB site challenge I'm working on, too: inking (the pink dot stencil in the background and the gold splatters), washi tape (it's a vellum border sticker, but I'm counting it, lol!), and die-cutters or punches (the large scalloped border).

The background paper I used for this page is also quite random: I went to an estate sale last week, and picked up an entire 12x12 Iris box of scrapbooking supplies and odd sheets of paper for a steal. At first glance, I was not going to use this paper for ANYthing except maybe as a background to protect my work surface, but then I decided it would fit in very nicely for this page-- I love it when things work out like that!

my splattering got a bit out of hand, but it turned out okay in the end, and it echoes the gold dots on the vellum.

my newest (old) scrappy storage: two wire wine storage racks, made in France. I got these at a community-wide garage sale I went to over the weekend. The minute I saw them I thought I could use them for something storage-related! Of course, it required a pretty extensive 'clean off' and re-organize of my work desk, but I think it was worth it.

the left-hand one is empty, showing what they looked like when I found them. Not very easy to store anything on them with all that open space, so I had to get a bit creative with it.

I cut heavy-weight patterned paper to fit the 'shelves' on the wine racks, and folded a bit of paper for the back, to keep things from sliding off. I also added a couple punched circles as 'handles' in case I need to slide the shelf out of its space.

This shelf holds my brown and black ink pads, and the ink applicatortool. These were on my desk before, so this wine rack was agreat way to gain additional actual 'work' space. I made a small 'tray'for the ink applicator tool, so it doesn't get ink all over the paper shelf.

This shelf holds a cork-board (it's half of a cork trivet from Ikea, actually)that stores a few other tools I use quite often. A chisel, my super-fine tweezers,corsage pins, a paper piercing tool, and the like. (The corsage pins are handy for carefully positioning- and removing- stickers from a page if you need to move them; ask me how I know, lol!)

So, now that I've done some random scrapping, random re-organizing, and random creating of art materials, I think my next goal is to actually finish that 2-page layout. (hopefully, anyway! ...we'll see what happens.)

April 05, 2013

Making this scrapbook layout is an experiment in (hopefully) streamlining my process of choosing materials for a SB layout. To that end, I'm sort of 'talking' through my process, here, so if you don't want to read that, you can skip over this post, and wait till I show the finished product! (I won't be offended, I promise!)

Choosing supplies is one of the parts (besides photo editing- but that's a topic for another post) that takes the longest for me, so I want to see if I can speed that part of the process up some.

I decided I would start this layout 'backwards' from what I usually do: instead of starting with the photos, I started by first pulling together a bunch of potential choices for embellishments, letter stickers, and papers that I thought might work. The only things I had already decided were: 1) that the background would be cardstock in some darker color- no white or cream, and 2) that it would be a 2-page layout, so I'd potentially be using larger pieces of paper rather than scraps. And okay, I guess didn't disregard the photos altogether: since the photos are of a desert plant nursery I knew I probably wasn't going to be using pastel blue, or purple, or gold, or anything like that- but I wasn't trying to 'match' any specific colors or pull together a 'theme' at that point.

I rifled through my boxes o' stuff (you can see my current organization method in this blog post), and grabbed anything that caught my eye in colors that I thought might work... I decided to limit myself to items in olive-y greens, orange, golden-yellow, along with some random pieces in red, brown, and blue.

my pile of potential embellishments, stickers, and borders

Next, I went through my patterned paper and pulled out any pieces that looked like they might work with the same color palette. Again, I didn't make any choices yet, just pulled out colors / patterns I thought might work and set them aside. Lots of yellows, a few greens, orange, red, a couple blue, etc. I probably ended up with, maybe, 10-12 pieces total?

Then I very quickly made a second pass through this entire pile (it only took a couple minutes). Many papers I liked at first glance didn't make the cut (a couple examples: the too-tropical-looking green pattern, the red paper that turned out to be on the pink side, the blue paper that looked way too much like the other blue one, etc.). I narrowed it down from 12-14 pieces to approximately six pieces that all more or less coordinated with each other in terms of the colors, and set my rejects aside. The picture below is what survived the second pass:

patterned paper + borders, scraps, etc. that made the cut (at this point there's still no guarantee that I'll use them)

I very quickly did the same process with my cardstock. I knew I needed two pieces (2-page layout), and I knew I wanted it to be a somewhat darker color. This is my first pass, after rifling through the cardstock storage box for only about 30 seconds:

All this cardstock is from the Bazzill warehouse sale, by the way- nothing beats getting a 12x12 pizza box stuffed full of cardstock for a flat fee, even if I did wait in line for an hour to get into the warehouse! And, somewhat embarrassingly, I went to this sale the year before last, I think, and the box is still pretty full. Not much scrapping happened last year, at all. (But, I hope to change that this year in a major way, with some personal goals and challenges posted on the new SB message boards I've been hanging out on.)

I decided to use the very first color of cardstock that I picked out (funny how that can happen, isn't it??) and put the rest of it back in its pizza box. Next, I arranged the photos onto the cardstock, so I could see how much real estate I had to work with for 'decorating' my layout:

the bare bones of the SB layout- photos + cardstock

(I worked out this photo arrangement a couple weeks ago, at the same time I printed the photos so I could decide which photos to choose, and what sizes to print them at. FYI, here's a tip: I worked out the photo arrangement using two 12x12 sheets of white cardstock. Once I had them arranged how I wanted them, I took a picture of it so I could remember it for later! I don't know why it took me such a long time to come up with that idea- it's such a simple one- but I think it's a brilliant one, since 1) I tend to do my scrapping in 'stages' instead of all at once, and 2) my memory is horrible, lol!So, next up is 'what I did' with all this paper, doo-dads, and photographs. Stay tuned for that! (since I'm still not quite finished with it, lol!)

April 04, 2013

Otherwise, we'd be in trouble, lol!! Krista is doing great! The next morning, the nerve block and aftereffects of the anesthesia had all worn off, and she seems mostly back to normal. Here she is, pretty much back to her usual happy self:

Granted, there are a few empty spots there, so she looks a bit goofy. But she's doing pretty good, even only a day or two after the surgery. I soften up her kibble with water, sort of like Chuck Wagon dog food (remember that stuff? I still remember those commercials!! click here to watch!) so it's pretty mushy, and her appetite is just fine. (as always, lol!)

Tom pointed out that her snoot looks a bit shorter, which is weird-- till he figured out it's a bit of an optical illusion, because it looks like there's some swelling in her nose and face. I'll be interested to see if her face looks any different after the swelling goes down, because a number of the teeth that were removed were the large molars in the back. (no doggie dentures needed though- the vet said she'll just chew on the other side of her mouth.)

April 03, 2013

yay, another completed scrapbook page! (and #2 of 50 in my 50-project challenge.) This page started out pretty simple in its arrangement, but like always, I made it take forever to complete. I really like it, though, which is a good thing, since I'm the one who made it, lol!

This page documents the day in February when we drove to Tucson to have lunch at Mi Nidito restaurant. We also did a very small bit of sightseeing while we were there, and went to Bach's Cactus Nursery (which I'm going to do an entire 2-page layout about, in addition to the photos I included here). The overall page layout is a grid, one of my favorites arrangements. The three large photos were printed at 3.5 x 5, and the other three spaces were built on top of 3.5 x 5 pieces of patterned paper. The plant photos were printed at 2x2, I think, then I trimmed them down a bit to fit better- the restaurant photos were printed at, maybe, 2x3? I think I trimmed them down, too, so the patterned paper would show a bit more around the edges.

This photo doesn't look like anything much, but I wanted to include it to show the background cardstock I used for this page... no, it's not a Christmas layout. The holly pattern, while it's technically the 'front' of the paper, was used as the 'reverse' on this layout. I got this paper at the Bazzill warehouse sale a couple years ago- I don't scrap a lot of Christmas pages, but I really liked the color of the cardstock. So, I bought some of it anyway, knowing I was going to use the reverse. Nobody said that just because it has a pattern that you have to use that side of it! :D

Here's a close-up of the flower section: this section was sort of an accident- the green polka-dot paper wasn't quite 3.5 x 5, so I added another piece of patterned paper to it to make up the difference, then covered the seam with some (new) Prima washi tape. Necessity is the mother of invention they say, right? Sometimes in creative endeavors, too! And I actually like it better than if I had just used one piece of patterned paper- interesting how that works out, isn't it??

A close-up shot of the title / journaling block. I knew I had quite a bit that I wanted to write (I usually do, lol!), so I typed the journaling on my typewriter-- I could never write neatly enough to fit all of that onto this layout writing by hand. Unfortunately with this much journaling, most of the pattern on the yellow patterned paper is now hidden, as are the three pieces of colored washi tape I put on the lower right side of the space.

here's one of the photo blocks, embellished pretty simply with a journaling tab punch (edged with ink to make it stand out against the cardstock background) along the edge of the block, a stamped/cut-out word embellishment, and a bit of typed journaling glued right onto the photograph. (I was really intrigued by these mosaic decorations that were all over the neighborhood around the restaurant, so I googled 'mosaics in Tucson' to find out more information about them. Turns out they were made by students at an alternative high school and Tucson has won some awards for this program, which I think is very cool!! Thank goodness for the internet, right??)

A close-up of the title area: the tag is a Cosmo Cricket tag sticker I thought matched the colors, and the letter stickers are some of my stash of beloved Sassafras Lass supplies (I'm still sad that this company went out of business, and I sort of hoard my stash of their stuff). The baker's twine was arranged into the perfect loopy arrangement, then I carefully glued it into place with my fabric/ribbon adhesive. (see what I mean about it taking lots longer complete this page than it could have?? lol!)

Here's a close-up of more of the small details that I kept adding to the page-- these details 'make' the page, in my opinion, but they also made the page take a lot longer than it might have otherwise taken! There's a few different types of stickers here (Jillibean soup brand, as well as October Afternoon, I think), and I added 3-D foam tape to give them extra dimension. You can also see here that I added some glitter glue to the striped paper to make it a bit more interesting. (there really wasn't much else I could do to decorate that space, since the photos covered most of the paper).

One last close-up view of one of the stamped embellishments: I stamped the word onto white cardstock with chalk ink, trimmed around the stamped image, then attached it to the page with 3-D foam tape. A nice detail, even if it did take a bit of time to do! (I've seen people do this on their SB layouts for years, but never did it myself till now- I quite like how it turned out, and I'm definitely going to do more of it.)

yesterday was a long day for Krista (and for us, too). We went to the vet at 7:00 am, so I could drop her off... she got her teeth cleaned, polished, and also, unfortunately, needed a couple (we thought) extracted. This is her 'before' picture, while we waited for her to be checked in:

She has a weird sort of underbite going on where you can see her bottom teeth when she looks at you. Turns out, those bottom teeth were moved out of place because they were loose! She also had some pretty bad breath going on, apparently due to lots of gum disease, and even had some abscesses and quite a bit of bone loss in her jaw. So, instead of just a few teeth being removed like we had expected, after about 6 hours of work altogether between the cleaning, all the X-rays, and the extractions, Dr. V. ended up extracting a total of 15 teeth. (dogs have 42 teeth total, but still, 15 is a lot!) I guess the same thing could happen to us, if we never brushed our teeth or saw a dentist regularly until we were middle-aged?

Here she is last night after bringing her home from the vet's office. She was still pretty loopy from the morphine, and didn't even move after I got her comfortable on the floor. (poor thing!) When she did finally try to get up, she got to the tile floor and went straight down, sort of like that scene when Bambi tries to walk on the ice for the first time...

This morning, she's doing much better, already! She ate all of her breakfast (mashed up with some warm water), and is much steadier on her feet. Now, she just has to chill out and heal till her 10-day checkup. (no problem, there, at all- her favorite activity is chilling!) Hopefully, she'll feel even better than she ever did before, considering that she's probably had these problems accumulating for quite a few years.

And as soon as I can, I'm going to start brushing her teeth, so we don't have to go through this again! :) (and brush the other dogs' teeth, too!)

April 01, 2013

It was a beautiful weekend for a drive!! On Saturday, we headed to Scottsdale for lunch on Saturday-- we enjoyed lunch at the newly opened Portillo's. Finally, now we have an authentic Chicago-area hot dog place here in the Valley!! It was pretty weird to walk into the place; it looks just like the ones in the Chicago suburbs... the greeter asked, 'have you been here before?' and the answer, is, well- yes, and no-- lol!! They were really hopping, but as efficient as I remember.

And the food tastes just like we remember, too! Here's Tom's Italian beef with extra sweet and hot peppers. It's something to do with the particular combination of seasonings in the beef, and the bread they use, I think... whatever it is, it's nice to have 'a bit of home' here in the desert!

And here's my chicken sandwich, with crinkle-cut fries, just like I remember it. It was definitely worth the drive! (and after this lunch, neither of us needed dinner Saturday night, either.)

a gorgeous fountain outside a resort hotel along Scottsdale Road... after having lunch, we headed south into the Old-Town Scottsdale area.

Tom needed to replenish his humidor, so we stopped in at the Cigar Warehouse to see what they had in stock. I love walking into this place-- the entire store is a walk-in humidor, and the aroma of tobacco and cedar is like nothing else there is.

This smell, too, is like nothing else-- orange blossoms. It's so hard to describe- sort of like grape soda, but not quite... sweet, and very heavy in the air when it's humid, or late in the evening when the air is still.

It's tourist season right now in the Valley, since major league baseballs's spring training season is just winding down. Driving through Old-Town Scottsdale, you never know what you might see!! There were horse-drawn carriages giving tours.. and then there was this! Seeing this Segway tour go by made me chuckle- not something you expect to see driving by on the road, that's for sure. Of course, there's probably lots of things about Scottsdale I still don't know, so then again, maybe taking a tour wouldn't be such a bad thing. (I don't think I could do it on a Segway, though- I'd feel silly!)

back on the home front, this prickly pear cactus in our backyard is finally starting to take off-- it didn't seem to like where it was planted and was extremely slow to start growing, but this season it will more than double in size, by the looks of it.

Here's a close-up of the new growth-- the pads / spines start out so soft and innocent-looking, don't they?? The problem with prickly pears is, there's the spines you can see, but there's plenty more of them that are too small to see easily with the naked eye. Those are the ones that cause the problems! You can sure feel them when they stick you! (There's just enough room between this cactus and the wall for the dogs to sneak through that space- it makes me nervous every time I see them do it, but so far, so good.)

We spent most of Saturday evening and a good part of Sunday enjoying the spring weather, relaxing on the patio-- here's Ariel having fun playing in an empty box I got on my last trip to Costco. It's so funny-- just like with kids, they can have all the toys in the world, but what they like playing with is the empty box, right?? lol!

Of course, Bisbee and Prescott had to have some fun with Ariel in the box, too... haha!!

And on another pet-related note, Krista is going to the vet on Tuesday for a dental procedure: teeth cleaning, x-rays, and possible (more likely probable) extraction of at least 2 or 3 teeth. Think good thoughts!!

(and lastly, how did it get to be April already, by the way?!? where does the time go??)

About Me

I'm a Midwestern small-town girl transplanted to the Arizona Sonoran Desert. If I'm not hanging out with my BF, our three sable Shelties and our three rescue cats, then I probably have paper or scissors in my hands, or glue or paint on my hands. I love scrapbooking and art journaling, I take classes when I can, and I experiment a lot in my art studio.